How this website is built

Headings, landmarks and document structure

Each page is one document with a single first-level heading and a heading order that never skips a level, so the heading list a screen reader produces reads as an outline of the page rather than a jumble. The page is divided into named regions — a banner, the main content and a footer — and every navigation region carries a name, so they can be jumped between directly instead of read through.

Using this site with a keyboard

Everything here can be reached and operated with a keyboard alone. The first thing the Tab key reaches on every page is a link that skips the navigation and moves straight to the main content; it stays out of the way until it is focused, and it moves onto the screen when it is. There are no menus that only open on hover, no keyboard traps, and nothing that responds to a mouse alone.

On macOS, Safari moves the Tab key between form controls only unless you turn on “Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage” in its Advanced settings. Until you do, links on any website are reached with Option and Tab together. That is a Safari preference rather than anything about this site, and both routes were tested here.

Focus indicators

Whatever the keyboard is focused on is drawn with a thick ring around it: a solid outline in light gold, with a dark inner stroke, so it stands out on every purple this site uses. The focus indicator is the first thing a keyboard user looks for, so it is never thin and never the same color as the background behind it.

Text alternatives

There is no photograph of any person anywhere on this site. The images are the practice’s own handwritten name and D&M monogram, which repeat a name already written on the page as text, so a screen reader passes over them rather than announcing the same name twice; and a map of the states the practice serves, whose states are also listed in text directly below it.

Color and contrast

Every text color is checked against the background it is actually painted on — read out of a real browser at the values it computes, not from a table written down somewhere — and every combination on this site reaches at least 7:1 for body text and 4.5:1 for large text, the WCAG AAA thresholds. The check runs across every page at three screen widths, and a page that fails it does not ship. Contrast is treated here as a core requirement rather than a finishing touch, because the people this practice serves include DeafBlind and low-vision clients.

No tracking, no forms, nothing collected

This site carries no analytics, no advertising pixel, no embedded social widget and no fonts loaded from anyone else’s server. It makes no request to any machine other than the one serving the page, so no company other than the hosting provider receives a request from your visit. It also has no form of any kind — no message box, no service selector, no upload. On a practice organized around Deaf identity, race and mental health, the address of the page being read is itself sensitive, and a form asking why you were getting in touch would collect a great deal more than that. The website itself stores nothing about your visit; the standard server logs the hosting provider keeps are described on the privacy page.

Reporting a barrier

A barrier is anything on this website that stops you from getting what you need — a page that will not work with your screen reader, text you cannot read against its background, or a control your keyboard cannot reach.

If you find one, email connect@dmcpinc.com and say what got in your way. You do not need to know the technical name for it.